


Bridges

by justhavesex



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, Cheating, M/M, Suicide mentions, i feel bad for petra in this fic tbh, this fic is the birth of 'born to die' by lana del rey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-17
Updated: 2017-05-17
Packaged: 2018-11-01 18:40:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10927722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justhavesex/pseuds/justhavesex
Summary: Levi get's divorced and Eren never learns.Love kills.





	Bridges

 

 

 

**14.**

Some things in this world are not meant to be.

He's seen this in action enough times to know how fate works. Such as Jean and Marco, they were in love and the day after Jean proposed to Marco, Marco got in a car accident that resulted in death. Later, it came to light that Marco really just ended up committing suicide. How Bertolt was helplessly in love with Annie, except her eyes were drawn to woman, so Bertolt ended up settling for a nice girl in the same department as him at work. How Armin is scared of homosexuality—despite being arguably gay himself—and decided to refer to himself as ' _asexual_ ' despite his crushing obvious feelings for Reiner, that Eren screwed up any chances of happening, in general. All these things that could have been, but did not happen. Fate is a funny thing, Eren thinks most of the time, watching on the sidelines with disinterest.

He guesses that's just how the world works: one either has happiness, or they don't.

He doesn't.

It's as simple as that. The one he loves is gone, he's known this since the very beginning. Their love was wrong from the beginning till the end, maybe he enjoyed being a mistress or maybe he's just as helpless as the main female lead in an American drama—her emotions rule over her head—and being completely honest with himself, Eren is beginning to understand people like that. Before he never got it, how people could abandon their own happiness in favour of just a tiny something from the person they crave, but he get's it now.

It isn't as though Levi was stringing him along like those terrible teenage boys in the TV shows, it's Eren stringing himself along. Levi wanted nothing to do with Eren, especially in the beginning, but Eren always managed to find himself at Levi's doorstep, forcing himself back into Levi's life until Levi had accepted, rinse and repeat. He sighs, tipping his Starbucks holidayed flavoured drink to the side, watching how the sprinkles clump together and their colours stain the white of the whip cream. He really must be getting depressing in his old age if he's getting to the point of feeling like the world is ending while he's sitting in a Starbucks studying.

"Eren," Mikasa's voice is soft, and Eren stops in his ministrations of tapping his pen insistently against the table to spare her from ripping his throat to shreds. She shoots him a quick sour glare slash slightly concerned look before looking back down to her text book. By now his coffee has already gone cold, not that he even wanted coffee in the first place but he had a feeling he'd collapse soon if he didn't put some sort of calories inside of him. Midterms are too close, nipping at his heels and he doesn't even know what he's learned so far. It all feels like a quick blur, and he hates every second of this motion picture that's now his life.

He makes a gingered effort at flipping open his own History textbook, nose crinkling back at the first page because he vaguely remembers the teacher saying something but then at the same time he's not really quite certain anymore. So he reaches for his coffee, determined to finish it before it's turns as cold as it is outside, the tips of his fingers brushing over the white cap of the cup and it's so stupid but he just feels like the world collapses at the very second, as thought some sort of blackness just swallowed him whole and left him to rot in it's stomach. There's no metaphoric reason, it's just that, everything sucks. His coffee—that's absurdly over-priced, eating away at his pathetically thin wallet—has gone cold, all his friends are far away, and he can't fucking even pick up a cup of coffee without wanting to cry anymore.

Words that aren't meant to be spoken slip, "What happens when you die?"

Mikasa looks up, looking mildly alarmed, her black eyes narrowing into slits. The type of look stray cats give you when you put your hand out to pet them, really, and Eren snorts under his breath at the mental image because it's not Mikasa that's his stray cat. That's Levi. Soft pale lips separate, eyes flickering upwards and her lashes gleam in the dim lighting of the coffee shop.

"Eren," his name seems to be some sort of code to her or something, because she always says it. Softly, she closes her textbook. "What's wrong?"

"I'm just asking a question, I _am_ in Philosophy, stop acting as though I'm going to kill myself." He slips, and she doesn't realize. She nods, as though understanding each word he truly meant to say before opening her textbook again. For a moment he thinks she isn't going to answer him, but her head tilts to the side, strands of thin charcoal hair spilling out like a see-through curtain on a sunny summer day.

"People mourn."

"I meant like is there an afterlife."

Her eyes flicker to him, nimble fingers flipping to the next page of her textbook. "I wouldn't know the answer, Eren."

"Humour me," he grumbles, about ready to snatch his bag and walk away. Mikasa is always so _punctual_ —there really isn't any other way to put it—sometimes it's annoying, like now, but sometimes it's all he needs in life.

In a beat, "You die. That's all there is to it. There's nothing after."

"So no Heaven or reincarnation, huh? I think Buddha might want to fight you on that."

Her lips raise into one of her soft humoured half-smiles that don't really fill the void in his chest anymore like they used too. Idle conversations now leave him feeling exhausted, and he's not sure what's more tiring anymore. Drowning or treading on water.

He returns her smile politely, anyway.

Outside has become cold, one of the cons to living in a pretty much year round cold country. November nipping at the heels of everybody, and reminding them that December is cutting corners, inching around the lamp post, skeleton fingers reaching out to them. Many love Christmas, Eren hates it. Christmas is the time of the year he has to spend hundreds on gifts for people he barely contacts anymore, wasting money he worked hard for just so people can feel that satisfaction of being needed. He doesn't want to fill their ego's, he wants to watch them fall with him.

He sighs, putting his cheek into the grasp of his hand, looking out the window to the frosty lamp posts, or the colourful scarfs of girls that walk by, their boots clacking against the cold pavement outside. Usually it doesn't start snowing until a week into December, but it changes every year.

"It sure is getting cold outside," he ends up muttering, almost absent-mindedly as he reaches for his cold drink and takes a long sip of it.

_It tastes gross_ , he thinks, and takes another sip.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**13.**

_We first met at a shitty concert_ , he pauses, looking up at his therapist with a sour look. "Do I really have to write this out?"

She smiles kindly, a tight motherly smile that Eren always tries to wash out of his mind every night. He knows it isn't her job to care about him, that's Mikasa's, but it always feels cold and detached to tell all his most personal things to a woman that speaks to 8 people with problems probably a lot more meaningful than his. He's just in love. That's all there is to it. He's always been against the idea of keeping a ' _journal_ '—a diary, he's just in denial—but in reality he knows there's a lot of therapeutic studies around how diaries help people improve and yada yada, he doesn't care, simply put.

"It's important," she puts it so simply.

"Can't I write it later?" He grits out, tapping the tip of his pencil against the small penis drawing on the corner of his page. The left side of her lip curls upwards, just slightly, the look of a scowl about to surface but she smooths it out with years of training. Eren ignores how reflexively his middle finger curls up to pick at the bleeding, crusty skin near his thumb, her eyes following the action. He could tell her the truth, that he's tried to write how he met Levi, their story, his feelings for him a million times, but the words never quite come out right. There's always an emotion he can't simply write. Parts of him, the private parts that hate to be shun with light, never letting himself pass his self made censor bar.

He erases the first line, placing the eraser neatly beside him on the coffee table and the clock behind him chimes _6:00 PM_.

"Safe," he huffs, slapping the diary closed and shoving it abruptly in his bag.

"Eren you need to write in your journal and you need to take your medication—"

"I don't _need_ medication." He says more stubbornly, picking at the piece of skin he's been proudly working at since he woke up at 5:00 AM this morning, crying. He glances at the clock again, she's always been a stickler about Eren arriving and leaving on time and yet when he _wants_ to leave on time, she'll never let him. He glances at her briefly, shooting one of his famous I'm-super-happy smiles, and she melts, just a bit. "I'll write in my journal."

"About your feelings?" She presses, standing up and smoothing out her skirt like a fancy office lady despite that fact she works in a small Self Help building behind the K-Mart store at the corner of Robson where all the white wannabe gangsters come around. Like, him, it's very complicated. The only reason he goes to her shitty clinic is because after his attempted hush hush suicide attempt 5 months ago he's been assigned mandatory psychiatric hours. He hates being treated like an invalid, he hates being an _actual_ invalid.

He glances desperately at the door, again, "How I felt about my burrito shit is feelings."

" _Eren_ ," he waves her a quick good-bye when her tone takes a Mikasa sort of vibe, wishing her a great week and that he'll be back next week with the same shitty attitude and terrible snap backs that have the sayings 'Dope' and 'Weed' on them, mostly for the aesthetic. He pauses on the way home, his shitty apartment one he shares with Jean of all people—thankfully Jean is many things, but he's most of all, stupid—which is wonderful for a borderline maniac depressive like him that almost succeeded in committing suicide. Sadly, he failed and managed to convince Jean that he _accidentally_ swallowed those 32 diet pills.

But when it comes to living with Jean and his extreme lack of privacy, it makes it really hard to write a fucking super in-depth journal about his feelings. If Jean even caught _wind_ of him writing in a diary, journal, whatever, he'd be answering questions and Mikasa would find out and she'd dig until Eren would be left bare. A giant gaping hole for her to gaze from above.

He settles for nestling himself up comfortably on the bench hidden far enough from dog walkers and joggers, but close enough for him to be bathing in sunlight, the lake shining right before his eyes. If he could paint, he would. But he can't. So he settles for propping his diary, pencil pressing into the tip of his pinky as he stares blankly at the scenery. It happens to often, him sitting in place and staring at nothing, feeling nothing, thinking nothing. It's scary, like detaching from oneself and dispersing into air. The sun gleams, warm and radiant, and he amuses himself with the idea of the sun hugging him.

_We first met at a shitty concert that I was only attending because Jean thought bands were cool, so he joined one. And I, as his forced to be best-friend, am dragged into attending around 95% of his terrible, shitty concerts. Levi was out of place, a fancy suit with a silk tie as he sipped on cheap beer and glared at every moving body that even grazed him, and I'm pretty sure he punched the purple haired girl when she touched his ass, by accident (we'll never know). I didn't want to talk to him, mostly because he wasn't my type, short, grumpy looking and most of all the golden band on Levi's ring finger was enough of a warning for somebody as timid as me._

_He approached me._

His leg cramps suddenly, fingers turning cold as the sun slowly moves away, the sharp winter air finally becoming sharp and chilly again. He closes his diary, shoves it into the furthest corner in his backpack and gets up, despite the creaking in his bones that almost hold him down. He glances at his phone, a single text in the entire day despite him texting four people today.

His psychiatrist keeps telling him to reach out, but why does he even bother anymore?

**6:54 PM**

**Horse-fucker**

_Where the fuck u fuckboi?_

"Why do I bother," he murmurs softly under his breath. He shoves his phone into his pocket and wonders, if it really came down to it, would somebody search for him, instead of him searching for them? There's Mikasa, he knows that she'll do anything for him. But, that's different. Maybe.

He doesn't really know anymore.

Every Wednesday as he heads to his 3:30 psychology class he always passes an old couple, it always disturbs him how their schedules always meet up and just three weeks ago they weren't on their usual walk and he actually felt _disturbed_ like this old couple owed him to be walking at that exact time, of course schedules don't always meet up and how their schedules always met up was just a creepy coincidence but it still relieved him when he saw them again the next week. He sighs, the back of his head bumping into the frame of the bath as he stares up at his ceiling the dim lighting of the sun making the bathroom glow an eerie orange as the low hum of a melodic song breezes through his room.

His psychiatrist tells him to move on, his heart tells him to go back and Armin is telling him to do whatever makes him happy, even though he disapproves. That's the thing about having an issue, everybody around you is trying to come up with the perfect ' _solution_ ' as though there is one. There never is one. Just a bunch of shit goes down and the person in question either picks themselves back up every time or, they'll drown.

He slides downwards, nose bubbling underneath the bath water.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**12.**

"University is scary." Eren pauses, lips thinning as he stares at the TV trying to put his thoughts together to explain them better to Levi. Levi is at the counter, pouring coffee from the coffee pot into the mug Eren had gotten for him last month for his birthday. The world is always so tranquil at 7 AM, like no one is awake and everybody is slowly opening their eyes like wobbly new born kittens. "I mean, the thought of it."

Levi dabs away some spilled coffee off of the counter.

Wind blows in gently from the window that's been left open all night in hopes of filling the house with cold air before locking everything up in awaiting for the day. Eren leans into the palm of his hand, eyes watery from sleepiness, and ponders, how it's weird how Levi always manages to look so _mystical_ in his surroundings, as though everything adapts to him. But that's the issue with those sorts of people, they're so used to everything adapting to them that they can never force themselves into adapting to their surroundings. Levi is one of those types.

Levi finishes up with the coffee and hands it to him, silently forcing himself to become more awake. Levi has never been a morning person, and yet, like a marionette he goes to bed at 11 and wakes up at 7 like clock work. He asked Levi why he does that, holding such a tight reign over his own self, and Levi had said something about ' _unlike brats, adults have to pretend to be adults which means growing the fuck up_ ', Eren didn't quite understand. In a way he understands now though, adults can't live a night life when they're working their keep, when there's no excuses to escape whatever they have to do for the day. Routine is key, but routine is always so mind numbingly _dull_.

"I don't want to leave," confesses Eren.

Levi sighs, eyes sharp, quick, a dark cloudly silver that Eren's always been so entranced by. "You can't stay one place forever, and if you do, you're going nowhere."

Eren leans forward, jostling himself awake from his mid-afternoon snooze on the park bench. He hadn't even realized he'd dozed off, but quickly he pats down his person making sure nothing was stolen and when everything is in the place he remembers leaving them he stands, bones creaking underneath the sudden movement. He never really dreams, when he does it's silver cat eyes staring at him as a dark black tail swishes back and forth, Eren frozen as the cat simply walks away. Sometimes he wonders if it's things like that he should tell his psychiatrist, but then, it doesn't take a psychiatrist to tell him that the dream is symbolically connected to Levi.

"You can't stay in one place forever," he thinks of his childhood home and how he had abandoned that home seeking out the warmth of Levi's, he thinks of Levi's home and wonders why that one collapsed so quickly, "And if you do, you're going nowhere."

It's ironic, almost, Levi is similar to that of a tornado. A tornado Eren had wanted to tie down and make roots on.

But Levi isn't somebody that settles: he'll come at you suddenly, everything he does without warning. Arguably, he's been in love with Levi since the moment he met the man. He's no longer scared of Levi in the sense he should be scared of him in, he's not scared of Levi punching him or saying something mean, because it's a guarantee that Levi will do or say something mean; what Eren is afraid of is beyond the boundaries of friendship, his fears lurk in a deeper sense of himself, the sort of fears you have about family or your spouse disappearing, Eren has always known Levi would disappear.

He's never directly told Levi he loves him, but he knows Levi knows, the man has always known.

Whenever Eren really takes the time to sit down and think of Levi, to really just _sit_ , to stay there and allow the world to pour into him. He can always see it, see Levi leaned against the couch, a window, a wall, his arms crossed over his chest and a glass hanging from the tips of his fingers in that strange fashion in which he holds his cups and objects alike. He can clearly imagine the silver grey clouded eyes, pupils narrowed into slits as he watches how Eren circles him, watches how Eren's facial muscles twitch at every word he says. Levi is a cat to him, patient, waiting, _dangerous_. Cats hold no loyalty, they merely flow through life depending on those that feed and pet them. They have no use for those that offer nothing to them; which is why Levi will not allow Eren to put a collar around his neck. Which is why they don't belong together, they never have and never will because Eren cannot bring anything into Levi's life that the male does not already have.

Levi is the world to him, and to Levi he is a shadow. Somebody that is always there when the sun rises and there at the dawning of a new reckoning, when there's nothing left his shadow will always be there—Eren will always be waiting for him—and yet, a shadow is forgettable at the same time. When the night comes again in all it's dark glory, he'll shrink and be forgotten until sunrise comes once again.

But Levi had loved him, despite all that, Levi had loved him. Eren did not own Levi, but Levi had loved Eren in every sense of the word.

He pauses, looking to the sun reflecting off the water and frowns at his own reflection.

_That can't be right,_ he says to himself in his thoughts.

Eren's feet move forward all the time and yet, half the time, he feels like he's walking backwards.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**11**.

"There's always a ' _before_ ', you know? A connection that was established before the meeting. I never realized it until I started realizing everybody I eventually met, met somebody I had previously met. A huge previous connection, through that connection it was as though the meeting was bound to happen. All people connected to person A will be connected to person B that person A was connected too—if it is meant to be—so there'll always be a before story, something before _your_ piece."

His psychiatrist taps her pen impatiently against the corner of her clipboard, she doesn't say anything out of fear of him stopping his long rant because she's been working really hard towards getting Eren to open his goddamn mouth about anything meaningful. But at the same time, Eren can feel she doesn't understand the correlation between his therapy and this tangent.

"Before Levi was Reiner, my first boyfriend," says Eren as he picks the corner of his thumb nail wondering why of all times his nails have suddenly decided to become thick. "Want to know the irony? The ' _before-story_ ' of Reiner, Levi, was the connection between Reiner and Petra. Petra was Reiner's middle school teacher. They kissed." Eren eats away at the edges of his mind trying to remember the story Reiner had told him about, "Petra's boyfriend left her and she was crying, Reiner caught her, and kissed her. Innocent, really. I think he was just trying to comfort her. So what I'm trying to say, don't you think it's weird? There's a sort of weird correlation between people that develops, know enough people and suddenly you'll know everybody."

Her lips smack dryly, "I see." She says slowly, trying to regain what psychiatry linked study she should link this thought with. Eren doesn't think it really has a deeper meaning, not on the surface, at least. Simply a musing, a revelation in the darkness of night. "Are you religious?"

He thinks of Levi, hunched over the alter as he prays, whispering his wishes to God before he'd always end with a sharp ' _don't actually grant any of that fucking shit, fucking old fart_ ' before abruptly leaving. Eren only accompanied him sometimes because their time together was dwindling because suddenly their paths were diverging, Eren was growing up despite not wanting too. "Maybe at one point I was," he remembers Levi glancing backwards to Eren, lip quirked slightly up to side as he scoffed at Eren struggling to open a jar, "But not anymore."

"And why is that?"

"God has to be one nasty fucking bitch, or some old guy with a lot of issues he can't solve. God is apparently the creator and can save human-beings from themselves, some religious sectors say that God can't save us 'cause we've all fallen', but what if he isn't God? Just some spirit humans pushed all their hopes and dreams onto? What if he's just one person and he can't be anymore than just that? I mean, I'm one person and I can't even solve my own problems. Imagine trying to solve _all_ problems. But you see, I hate that, trying to convince myself not to worry because 'God has a plan for you', a plan for me? What if he missed me? Accidentally, you know."

She smiles softly, it almost feels real. "There's nothing wrong with feeling abandoned."

Eren goes rigid at that. Abandoned? He never considered himself _abandoned_ , but maybe he is. Abandoned by his dead parents, abandoned by the one person he trusted the most, abandoned by his own mind. He smiles. All teeth.

"First thing you've said that I agree with."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**10.**

They first met at a shitty concert that Eren was only attending because Jean thought bands were cool, so he joined one. And Eren, as his forced to be best-friend, was dragged into attending around 95% of his terrible, shitty concerts. Levi was out of place, a fancy suit with a silk tie as he sipped on cheap beer and glared at every moving body that even grazed him, and Eren's pretty sure he punched the purple haired girl when she touched his ass, by accident (we'll never know). Eren didn't want to talk to him, mostly because he wasn't his type, short, grumpy looking and most of all the golden band on Levi's ring finger was enough of a warning for somebody as timid as himself.

He approached Eren.

Eren didn't really try to spark a conversation, but it was electric. Being with Levi was thrilling, exhilarating. Levi was a dose of shit Eren never knew he needed in a person, Levi was like a perfect fit to him. They could just _know_ each other, but they didn't, not then, maybe not even at the current moment. They spoke, and spoke, danced and drank the night away. It all blurred to the point where they were both naked, half-sober mostly pretending to be drunk because neither wanted the moment to end. But like all good things, at the end of every hazy comfortable dream, everybody must wake up.

"This was a mistake," Levi had said so harshly Eren felt his entire world slowly crumbling around them. Levi reached out, hands slightly shaking as he slipped his wedding band back onto his ring finger, looking to Eren as though there was a particular annoying stain on his bed sheets. "Leave."

The rejection stung, sure, but Levi at that point was just a one-night stand that Eren was willing to forget about. His life was shitty enough, he didn't need to add ' _fucking married men'_ onto his list of shitty-Eren-things-to-do. He remembers staggering his way home, having to cross this unfamiliar bridge, and he was too drunk to form a coherent thought but he slipped onto the bus and got home safely.

A week later Eren tried to jump off of that exact bridge, Levi was walking home with two grocery bags and he dropped both of them—the sound of cracking eggs made Eren's ears ring—and Levi yanked him backwards, Eren's body slapping against the pavement, momentarily winding him as he curled onto his side, moaning in pain. Levi was brutal, grabbed the front of Eren's shirt and hissed, " _Oi brat the fuck you th_ —you..."

Levi is no saint.

"Sorry," Eren had cried, bloody nose staining Levi's hands and his own white t-shirt, Levi just sat there slightly dumbfounded as Eren wailed so loudly, "I'm so sorry."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**09.**

Why do people fall in love?

Sometimes Eren likes to think it has nothing to do with love, but has everything to do with loneliness. How lonely does that person feel? Were they lonely when they met the person they're dating? How many _close_ friends does that person have? Eren likes to think he fell in love so heavily, so _brutally_ , because he wasn't feeling the emotion of loneliness. He truly was, physically, alone. It was like this, he was scratching, struggling and screaming, trying to grasp on to every friend he's ever made, trying to build a bridge between them so he wouldn't fall through the cracks. But nobody was there. Nobody was fucking _there_. When Levi came to him, Levi was the only person who was there. The only person that would listen, the only person that could save Eren from himself.

Eren was really, really, lonely.

And, maybe, Levi was too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**08.**

Eren found himself going back to Levi's apartment everyday after school.

He'd go to his classes, find himself staggering his exhausted body across the bridge—eyes lingering over the rushing water with magnetism—he never really decided to play out the thoughts of him crawling over the railing and falling forward, the sting of the cold air slapping his face, his shirt fluttering violently for a few seconds before he finally slaps into the water, willing and placid. The first two times are the most appealing, mostly because Levi and him weren't that close yet, well, Eren became attached too Levi, but Levi wasn't attached too him. Maybe he never was.

Levi, after the second week, had slipped a key into Eren's coat pocket as Eren was getting ready to get on the bus. Eren had been so happy, for the first time in so many years, he had cried from happiness. Levi had looked at him with a disgusted but fond look, coaxed Eren away from his side and onto the bus and Eren had spent the whole bus ride fiddling with the key like a toddler receiving a new toy. It was so fascinating too him. He would text Levi, text back, maybe it was just simple things but receiving texts like ' _let yourself in_ ' and Eren's hand was shaking the first three times he had to use his key.

He would do the dishes, tidy around the house and then do his homework. Levi would come home, smile at Eren—for a split second, a second Eren spent everyday waiting too see—his face would soften, lips curled just barely at the sides as though pleased to find Eren in his home. The look always left Eren breathless, but then it would be gone, soothed over by Levi's usual look of indifference and the world would suddenly become cold again. Being with Levi was the only time he ever felt grounded; alive, _happy_. He would stumble through his days, hazy and tired and finally reach his sunshine.

They went on like that for weeks.

But like all good things, it had to end.

He had came to Levi's, without previously texting Levi for the first time, and had been whistling as he unlocked the door and wandered in. Petra was standing there, at the sink washing dishes—something _he_ usually does—and she had looked up at him startled. It clicked within Eren then: the _wife_. He had almost forgotten about that convenient fact. Levi is, well, was, married. "Oh I'm sorry—"

"Are you Eren?" She asked softly, smile gentle and motherly.

"Oh, uh, yeah."

"He had mentioned something about taking in a lost dog while I was on a trip," Petra laughed, her voice light and airy, "Honestly. What is that man thinking."

_Lost dog_ , the term hit him in a rough way. A lost dog. A fucking _mutt_. Of course that's how Levi had seen him, a wandering suicidal brat that needed scraps and left-over love to get his wagging little tail through the day. Eren wants to be sad, collapse to the ground and beg her to leave and give Levi to him. _I'm just a mutt, a mutt, I need him more than you do_ —

"I just got back today," she places the last dish into the rack, wiping her hands dry and the gleam of her wedding ring almost looks sinister to Eren.

"Oh, then I'll go."

 

 

 

 

 

 

15 minutes after his encounter with Petra he found his toes dangling over the ledge of the bridge.

_Honestly I should have done this sooner_...

He should have. He really should have.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**07.**

University is scary.

As you get older your friends, friends that were once close and wrapped around your arms, smiling to you, keeping in contact with you, become colder. Relationships freeze over time. People get older, grow up and move on. But the issue is, Eren can't move on. He can't simple just walk forward through life without looking back a good eight times. He misses memories like a heavy weight held within his front thoughts, he feels burdened by his love for the people he had built attachments with his entire life. Why must he grow up? He's always in this constant permeating fear of adulthood.

_Oh please I don't want to be trapped in an unhappy marriage, children ruining my life, no friends, miserable at my job_ — he'd do absolutely anything to escape the mundane life that was beginning to shine over the horizon. _Please, please let me be happy_. It's impossible. It's impossible to receive something that one doesn't even truly _want_. Happiness would mean clean breaks, restarting and leaving the toxic love he has built around Levi over years. Sometimes, as he remembers Levi, he can feel his chest fill with poison and all he can do is try to struggle for a breath, wishing to anybody willing to hear, _please don't let this end_.

Without Levi what would he do? He would no longer have a person to return too.

And that's more terrifying than any concept of death.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**06**.

"How have you been?"

Of all people to run into, of all the fucking people in the entire fucking _world:_ Eren had to run into Reiner. Ever since their second-year beer pong champion decisive battle while they were in high school, to which ended up in Reiner punching Eren across the face and calling him a " _stupid cunt bitch!_ " in the revelation of the night that Eren was sleeping with Reiner's long term crushes husband, they had a bit of a falling out. Or well, Eren was sleeping with Reiner's long term crushes husband, that is until Petra and Levi divorced and Levi came to him wholly as his own.

Eren, when he had first seen Reiner, was content with the thought of simply turning away and pretending they've never seen each other, but Reiner approaches him first. Shoulders pulled upwards in a defensive way, smile too tight to be friendly, but not aggressive. Reiner, for all that he is, is not a forgiving person. He is stubborn, stead-fast and quick to get violent. Eren's never seen, let alone _heard_ of a case in which Reiner tries to become friends with somebody he had fought with again. Sure they were best friends in high school, but does that all really matter now?

Eren holds his drink awkwardly within his cold hands, watching how the wind pours snow all around Reiner as though it's a haloed glow.

"I'm sorry I lashed out at you that day," Reiner quickly adds in when his previous statement is met with stunned silence by Eren, "It's just I wasn't expecting you to do something so stupid. I was angry at you because, I don't know, you were letting this guy take advantage of you like that but—who am I to decide? But looking back on it, I guess it makes sense,"

Eren is almost expecting Reiner to tell him that Eren has always been into being some middle aged dudes mistress, but Reiner smiles crookedly, rubbing at the back of his neck.

"I mean," his breath huffs, like a small cloud of cold smoke, his eyesight turning to look somewhere very far away. Eren wants to reach out, reel him back to shore, clasp his face and tell him that all is forgiven. He never hated Reiner for what he said, because each word of it was so painfully _true_. Reiner looks sad as he says very softly, "Out of everybody I know, you've always hated yourself the most. And maybe, maybe I didn't want you too."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**05**.

In his fourth year of high school Reiner and him dated for a solid month and a half.

Throughout this entire time, Eren was sleeping with Levi. Well, sometimes he did. After his close encounter with Petra, Eren found it hard to drag himself into an area he had previously marked as his territory: as his _home_. Levi was the only person he felt safe with, and yet, he was bitterly reminded that his safe haven belonged to another. He felt territorial, so maybe, that's what led Eren to bitterly hating Levi. He couldn't help it, he would see Levi and his lungs would be inflated with dark matter of hatred, Levi's face that once brought him calmness and relief made his stomach knot and a sickly feeling would settle within his bones.

Being with Reiner was much easier. Reiner was wild, free, loved to do things at his own pace. It was either march alongside, or be left behind. Everything was at Reiner's drum, like a rhythm that guided lost souls over the creek. Reiner was the ferry to the living. Or at least, that is how Eren interpreted dating Reiner as like. But, on the flip side dating Reiner was as though dating eight other people at the same time. If you were dating Reiner you had to be friends with all his friends, had to love his family like Reiner did, all of his emotional attachments became the emotional attachments of his lover as well.

Reiner was grounding, but he was not calming.

Reiner was still in love with Petra, but that was fine, because Eren was in love with Levi. They mostly dated for the physical contact, which Eren craved for more than the emotional contact, so it worked for them. It _worked_.

"What is that?"

Levi had harshly yanked down the back of his shirt, and Eren had yelped quietly, scattering upwards as his heart slapped against his rib cage like a wild animal howling to be free. All he could think was, _he saw he saw he saw he saw_ , and Levi's expression fell into a haunting one. Then to angry. Eren holds still, waiting for Levi to break the silence mostly because he knows right now Levi _can't_. Petra is in the washroom, and if she came out to Levi getting angry about Eren sleeping with people other than _him_ , oh, well, wouldn't that be a conversation to have?

"Petra," Levi had called out loudly, pointing to Eren's shoes with a deeply disturbed expression and mouthing ' _put them on_ ' sternly. "We're going out."

Levi doesn't comment on the hickey's, or anything really. Not that Eren was expecting him too, Levi just silently hands him a bag, the sweater Eren leaves at Levi's house, and motions his hand.

"What?" Eren asked, irritated.

"Keys. Give them back."

" _What_?" Eren repeated, suddenly feeling breathless. Levi can't do this to him, was his first thought. Levi's house was his safe haven, the only place he only truly felt he _belonged_. To take that away would be the ultimate act of cruelty, and Levi knows it, he _knows_ he knows it.

"We both can't be cheating, then what's the point of us even being fucking together?" Eren doesn't really remember what else Levi had said, it had played before his eyes like a black and white still-motion picture, the clacks of the projector shuttering in the background as Eren felt cold sweat suddenly on his back.

"What else am I supposed to do," Eren whispered, wiping his hands down against the sides of his jeans, "You have Petra and I don't even have _you_."

"Brat," what had Levi said to him? What was it that Levi always said to him in moments like this? Eren had always felt stupid, it was as though he was running and running, always trying to catch up to Levi, but Levi is just tugging along the string, amused. No that's not right. This was the beginning of the end, he remembers it more clearly now. "I'm going to leave Petra."

"What?"

"So give back that key," Levi motioned back out for his key, sighing, "I'm getting a new place soon."

"You, when, what do you plan on telling her?"

"That I'm leaving her for a stupid high school brat. What else?"

"Levi—"

"Fuck that other guy again and I'll never need to see your sorry expression again because we won't be in contact," Levi added quickly. "Understood?"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**04**.

"I'm seeing a therapist," Eren declares out-loud in a room full of people he would, if forced, claim to be his best friends. Which only really consists of Armin, Mikasa and Jean but for some reason Annie is here as well but he doesn't really _care_ if Annie is here or not. Meeting Reiner had pulled him forward in a way he wasn't expecting. Reiner is _right_ , he does hate himself. But his life doesn't just belong to him, he can't just off himself and be done with it. Pieces of yourself always belong to other people, wasn't that what his mom always used to say? No life is lived alone. "After I tried killing myself for the fifth time."

"Eren—" Mikasa says, chair clattering against the floor as she shoots up, eyes wide. She looks absolutely terrified, finger tips shaking as she reaches out to grab him and make him into a tangible living _form_. Armin even looks surprised, and Eren feels smug that he really has managed to keep it such a well kept secret for so long. How many months have passed since Levi? Before Levi? Between Levi?

When has his life become a series of novels between periods of time before, during and after Levi.

"Is—" Armin hesitates, lips dry, "Does this have to do with Levi?"

"Levi? No. Not really. I tried to jump off this bridge by his house like a week after sleeping with him and he stopped me. It was funny." It really wasn't. Eren remembers crying so hard his head had burned with a headache and Levi had just smoked silently as he let Eren cry it out before curtly demanding ' _what the fuck was that?_ ' but it wasn't Levi's fault at that point. It was his. It always has been his own fault. Mikasa frowns at him roughly, "I just, my therapist said I should try talking to you guys more." Lie, Reiner had told him to do it. "To actually talk about my issues."

"Levi?" Jean asks, face furrowing, "Who the fuck is Levi?"

Eren wants to laugh, really he does, but all he musters is a sad half-smile. He's written the sentence a million times in his damn diary only to erase it every time, but not this time. This time he will make it all tangible. This time he will describe who and what Levi is. "We first met at a shitty concert that I was only attending because Jean thought bands were cool, so he joined one. And I, as his forced to be best-friend, am dragged into attending around 95% of his terrible, shitty concerts. Levi was out of place, a fancy suit with a silk tie as he sipped on cheap beer and glared at every moving body that even grazed him. He approached me." He recites, and then hates how his voice breaks into sounds he can't even _grasp_ , "We fucked. I left because he was married, it was a mistake, you know? But then I just kept going back to see him and his wife was gone who knows where and I was actually fooled into thinking maybe she was dead or something and he just wore their wedding band as a memento or something, you know?"

"You fucked a married guy for _weeks_?" Jean coughs out at, voice hitting a loud screeching note and Annie hisses at him to shut up. "No wait what the fuck were you _thinking_ Yeager?"

"I don't know," Eren says, voice small as he leans backwards, "I just, I really thought I loved him."

"Eren," Armin says in a gentle soothing voice this time, coming to rub his back and Eren steels himself.

"Then his wife came back and we started to see each other less and I was just overall depressed again, and, and that's when I started dating Reiner. Levi found out and got really angry I was fucking some guy on the side, and when I say it out loud like this I really have to ask what the fuck is _wrong_ with me."

"You were cheating on the guy that was cheating on his wife. You're like a soap opera."

"I was cheating on the guy that was cheating on his wife, with the guy that _loves_ the wife." Eren corrects, smiling wryly at Jean's baffled expression. "Petra? Reiner's long-time crush. Either way Levi found out, then Reiner found out I was cheating on him too because he caught me trying to kill myself so I confessed the entire sha-bang. Then we broke up and Levi refused to talk to me until he divorced Petra."

"Amazing," Jean says, sounding truly _awed_. "I never saw this coming, if I'm being honest, when I suggested we play games and get shit-faced."

"Why did you try to kill yourself while you were dating Reiner?" Mikasa asks sharply, and Eren leans back into his chair, blinking away the sprinkles of memories dancing white before his eyes. Why did he? He can't remember anymore, all he felt was numbness, Levi's rejection fresh in his mind as he pulled out the steak knives and brought it down to his wrist. Reiner's harsh cruelty, the slap across the face. He wasn't even _thinking_ , he had almost felt possessed. Reiner's words had felt like a rejection to his entire whole _being_.

"I don't know, I just felt like I needed too."

"Eren—" Mikasa hisses out sharply, coming to coil around him like a suffocating mother hen.

"Then," Eren pauses, swallowing roughly. This is the part of the story he's never told anyone, the part of the story he's never _wanted_ to tell people. He was always willing to forget about this part of the story, of his and Levi's story mostly because it's always put him in such a shitty light. But he's at the bottom now, he can't get any lower. "Then I moved in with Levi in the last year of high school."

 

 

 

 

 

 

**03**.

He's at an all time high, he feels like he's used up his entire life's worth of luck to get to the point he's at now. Moving out had been easy, his father doesn't care and his mother was happy to watch him leave their abusive household even if it _was_ to go live with his 15-year older lover that just left his wife for Eren. Living with Levi was great, sure Levi nagged about cleaning and everything else, but it was fine. Because he loved Levi, he still does.

It's after 5 months of living together, being together, fucking together, cleaning together, just being in _love_ in a non-toxic way that Eren swears it isn't fair. He shouldn't be this happy, he's never been this happy.

He should have known better, nothing good ever lasts.

Levi get's in a fatal car crash.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**02.**

Petra was at Levi's funeral.

It seemed stupid, it really does, but she was there, crying for Levi even though Levi was the man that cheated on her and left her for some high school _boy_. She even hugged him, rubbed his back and whispered to him ' _I'm here if you need anything_ '. Eren felt like the worst person in the entire world. He had stolen the happiness of someone so beautiful and pure, and this was his karma. He took someone else's happiness so it only makes sense he get's to the highest point in his life only to been flung straight back into the mud.

"Since we aren't officially divorced yet they gave me his will," Petra said, her voice thick with tears and Eren had numbly took the envelope held between his shaking hands. It seems so fucking stupid. In the movies the sky is always crying, people standing in front of the grave with their umbrella's and weeping for the dead, but Eren is just sat at the front of the funeral home, a man standing with cue-cards as people mourn with coffee and cookies. It's anti-climatic, that's what it is. He thought that the entire world would split in half for him, or at the very least, he'd lose his goddamn mind. "It has a letter for you, well a few, and one for me. Well the one for me is an apology letter, really." She paused, lips curling softly. "Stupid, he doesn't need to apologize to me for being in love."

"Did you read them?"

"Of course not!"

It wasn't until 5 hours later did Eren really open up Levi's letters. His actual will went to the lawyer Erwin Smith that was supposed to deal with it, and Eren found himself back in his and Levi's empty apartment, staring blankly at the wall, trying to make sense of anything and everything.

 

_Brat,_

_If you're reading this I'm dead. I don't plan on dying before you, but life is a fuckfest. I wasn't going to write your sorry ass a letter but I decided too just in case you felt like following me into the afterlife like the shitty human being you are. If we're both old wrinkly men, then go at it, commit the suicide you so desperately want too._

_Otherwise, you better keep on living._

 

_Love, Levi._

 

Eren had curled forward, letter crumpled at the sides, as he had sobbed. He didn't want to live a life without Levi, he really doesn't. He _can't_.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**01**.

"Eren," Annie says, patting the top of Eren's head, and Eren let's a shuttering breath leave his lips. He hates telling the second part of the story when him and Levi were truly happy, because, as stupid as it sounds, it hurts more. It hurts to look back and remember Levi laughing, drinking his tea in that stupid way he refused to stop, waking up in the morning to see Levi—and the only times he would see, aside from sex—Levi messy. It hurts to remember Levi _alive_. "You'll be okay."

He wants to say _no_ , no, he really won't. He still keeps the apartment him and Levi used to live in, even though he can barely afford it, by renting it out with Jean. He hates university and his entire life seems so goddamn _bleak_. He only is alive because Levi would want him to struggle to his very last breath. It's why he can't kill himself, no matter how hard he tries, why he can't just seem to throw away this life Levi had given him. It _sucks_.

"You have your entire life ahead of you, then I'm sure you'll meet that guy again. And he'll say: good job, you did it. You lived happily."

"I just," Eren says, voice breaking as he curls into himself, his body feeling cold, "I loved him, you know? I really did."

"And I love you," Mikasa says, kissing his forehead, and Eren feels like a child again, "So please don't die."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**00.**

Some things in this world are not meant to be.

He's always known this, _always_ , yet he always thought for some reason him and Levi would end up together. That the stars would align their path and guide them into each other's arms at the very end of the path. But Eren was wrong, Levi was never meant to be the end of his path, Levi was always meant to be the turning point: to the guiding angel that alights the way for Eren's lost soul.

It's just, not fair, not _fair_. Levi was his entire life. His sun, his moon, his air, his _sky_ —he would have given up anything in this world and the next in order to be with Levi.

But the thing is, sometimes, sometimes you'll just get so low, so fucking _low_. Eren has had moments where his face is pressed into dirt, the world just trampling over him, diverting their eyes from him as though he's some sort of forgotten rag. But that's just life. But get low enough, get to the point in which you're just going down so quickly and all you can think is ' _I want to live, I want to live, I want to live_ ' and that's all there is too it. There's no hero's, no knights, no queens or kings, not in a figurative sense, anyway. You can't make homes in other people. That's just the way it is, he figures.

He hangs his head back, Annie's voice loud and riveting through the echo of the tunnel, Reiner's voice booming as he laughs at Jean trying to hit a high note. Eren's fingers hang out of the window, scenery blurred by how fast they're going, the wind cutting into his skin, cold and unforgiving.

"I can do this," he whispers to himself, he almost feels like crying. "I want to be alive."

At the very least, Levi wanted Eren to live.

That has to mean something, doesn't it?


End file.
